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Sayantan Datta

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill is an important juncture for transfeminist mobilisations—both transformative and transgressive. This article attempts to make apparent the systematic and systemic disenfranchisement of transgender persons, and also attempts to locate the efforts of the state and its policies at the intersection of privilege, power, and neo-liberal erasure.

Feminist solidarities [1] bring people together from their positions in oppressive structures as the oppressed. However, this evolution needs to be questioned from an intersectional position where the linear documentation of the politics of solidarity building fails. This article attempts to contextualise feminism(s) in the readings of academia [2] and the transactions of its power(s) from a queer-feminist perspective. It documents sexuality on lines of sexual harassment faced by queer-trans persons and women, and locates trauma in this discourse. It aims to build a locus of storytelling of this trauma beyond whispering and (re)imagines solidarity-building and caretaking in these exchanges.

Bhavitha, a hijra person from Warangal, Telangana, was found dead on 2 December near a dustbin. The police did not allow her sisters and other hijra persons, to claim her body, because apparently, only biological parents or “blood relations” can lay such claims. Her body is not hers, but of the society. Burning her body might delete her corporeal existence, but the marks of the collective trauma that queer-trans people face every moment of their lives can never be erased. It is better to burn after death than to burn every day, and yet the heat kills only us, and not the ones who light the...

Appeal for Donations to the Corpus of Sameeksha Trust

This is an appeal to the subscribers, contributors, advertisers and well-wishers of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), published by Sameeksha Trust, a public charitable trust registered with the office of the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai, India. EPW has completed 50 years of publication. Details here: